Abstract

Following mainly Ricoeur’s understanding of ideology and assuming as fundamental premise the idea that this phenomenon is rooted in the exact same ground as the metaphysics of everyday life, the author argues that every ideology, at a social level, has two types effects: vulgar effects (in the originary sense of the word) and limit effects defined as those types of effects which exceed any institutional or communitarian reason and whose distinctive mark is the excessive violence in an arbitrary or pathological form. The paper centres on this latter type and traces its history in the sphere of philosophy since Pythagoras, through Socrates Boethius, Descartes, Schelling and up to Russian or Romanian philosophy of our times